Tina Aumont stars as a reluctant bride in Tinto Brass’s The Howl (1970). Her iconic gothic make-up and wedding gown were the reason I first watched the film, as stills constantly circulated Tumblr during my high school years. Despite her zany performance, she is by far the most grounding part of the movie, perhaps because her character is positioned as an outsider to the bizarre communities she encounters while on a sort of perverse honeymoon. The film opens with her marriage to Berto Bertolucci (Nino Segurini), during which she declares, “It’s a trap!” Her nonchalant approach to the marriage—she answers Bertolucci’s proposal with, “if you like”—models the best way to watch The Howl: as a passive but willing observer to a barrage of nonsensical yet entertaining scenes.
Tonally, The Howl feels similar to something like Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) or Daisies (1966) mixed with the erotic horror films of Jean Rollin. It follows in the great avant-garde film tradition that sees surrealist women torture square men. Even the sex itself is absurd instead of sexy, especially the many, many orgy scenes. At one point the narration declares, “There would be a love scene here, but this is a documentary.” These meta-textual references continue throughout the couple’s journey, with Brass invoking the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci with different characters, in addition to splicing in archival footage from World War II propaganda films. At one point, Aumont literally blows up screen projections of fascist leaders with a machine gun, creating a literal rupture in the viewing experience.
If it’s hard to picture this sequence of events, that’s because The Howl is a film that genuinely defies explanation. Mid-century surrealist filmmaking often straddles the line between grating and engaging, and it’s Aumont’s high-energy performance that prevents the film from becoming too obfuscating. The penultimate scene in The Howl is a fiery car crash, in which Aumont’s bride is eulogized as “a beautiful girl, intelligent but nuts.” Is that not the greatest thing you can hope to have on your tombstone? Brass ends the film with a literal giant question mark floating on screen. The narrator asks, “Is it clear?” No! But it’s a fun time nonetheless.
The Howl screens tonight, April 19, and on April 22 and 25, at Anthology Film Archives as part of the series “La fille des étoiles: Tina Aumont.”
